Man, if I was in charge the only thing left in the front office would be the chairs, desks, computers and phones. The cubicles would be covered in blood.

People (including Doug Smith) kept crying out for a culture change without really understanding what it takes to change an organizational culture. As I've been saying for 3 years, you can't have a culture change without changing the people. The culture of an organization comes from its people. Not the other way around. Yeah, you can convert the odd outlier into an existing culture but that's not generally how it works. Usually, you just hire people who fit the organizational culture in the first place.

This is what organizational change looks like. Sometimes, innocents get caught in the crossfire.

...The question I ask is:
Do you think there has been too much change and too many people discarded over the last month?

I might point to Raptor players who were either let go or traded and then went on to have successful careers with other teams. There have been a slew, going back to the early years. On the other hand a lot of players were let go and then disappeared.

A more useful question might be "How do the Raptors compare, in terms of roster shuffling, with more successful teams in the NBA." I think there is no doubt that playing together for a couple of seasons, or even having the same starting five for a full season, helps a team be as competitive as they can be. It allows a coach to create an offense and defense that suits his players.

Without knowing how the Raps compare with other teams, my sense is that there is too much shuffling of players on the floor. Hard enough to keep up with the scouting reports on other players when you are meeting up with a new team every couple of nights. You shouldn't have to also be reading scouting reports on the new starters as well, just so you know where to pass to them.

As for front office staff, I don't know if movement is the issue as much as properly staffing it. I have often said in this forum that I don't believe the raps have ever had good enough scouts or coaches. There are players on the team that need individual coaching to improve their game. Individual coaches, scouts and trainers are cheap compared players, and don't count against the cap. Incremental improvements in each player can pay off tremendously when your payroll is $70 million. A 5% improvement gives you a $3.5 million payoff. That covers a lot of coaches and trainers. And striking it rich in drafting late in the first or in the second round only has to pay off once every year or two to more than pay for the cost of scouting.

I might point to Raptor players who were either let go or traded and then went on to have successful careers with other teams. There have been a slew, going back to the early years. On the other hand a lot of players were let go and then disappeared.

A more useful question might be "How do the Raptors compare, in terms of roster shuffling, with more successful teams in the NBA." I think there is no doubt that playing together for a couple of seasons, or even having the same starting five for a full season, helps a team be as competitive as they can be. It allows a coach to create an offense and defense that suits his players.

Without knowing how the Raps compare with other teams, my sense is that there is too much shuffling of players on the floor. Hard enough to keep up with the scouting reports on other players when you are meeting up with a new team every couple of nights. You shouldn't have to also be reading scouting reports on the new starters as well, just so you know where to pass to them.

As for front office staff, I don't know if movement is the issue as much as properly staffing it. I have often said in this forum that I don't believe the raps have ever had good enough scouts or coaches. There are players on the team that need individual coaching to improve their game. Individual coaches, scouts and trainers are cheap compared players, and don't count against the cap. Incremental improvements in each player can pay off tremendously when your payroll is $70 million. A 5% improvement gives you a $3.5 million payoff. That covers a lot of coaches and trainers. And striking it rich in drafting late in the first or in the second round only has to pay off once every year or two to more than pay for the cost of scouting.

I think you are making this more than it was intended to be. The intent was to get people's perceptions on the last month with TL and MU.

Doug Smith is using his position to bemoan the changes Leiweke and Ujiri have made thus far. I think this all stems from "too many people discarded." I can't see how anyone given the results of the Raptors over the last 7 years (and 18 really) can question discarding people unless they are doing so from a personal and biased position.

Doug has his panties in a knot because the people he is paid to cover have become, what he considers, his friends over the years... my two cents.

There hasn't been too much change, and i dont know if there's been enough for now and neither does Doug smith. He may know more than us, but i'm pretty sure Masai knows more than him.

The Big sell point on the position was that the GM would have full authority on basketball matters, so i dont see what the problem is, so far no one has been traded, no coaches have been let go, so obviously, the house cleaning so far are only people who work directly with Masai and affect how he's able to perform his job. There is no reason to wait on that, to the contrary the faster the better, because the faster Masai gets HIS work place set up, the faster he can start working on what interests us the fans, the ROSTER.

He was Assistant GM for 3 years, so i'm pretty sure he knows how things are run behind closed doors, he went to another team for 3 years figured out how to do things his way, saw how toronto was doing things from afar, and now came back. Doug smith is pissed because he's loosing all his sources and he's trying to paint this as rash decisions, but these decisions have been made over 6 years while Masai was dreaming of being the GM, decisions that were made with way more information that Doug smith knows.

I don't beleive for 1 second, that AW was let go without consulting Masai, again the big thing was he has full control, and when he got here he said his big thing is scouting, so you really think TL is gonna make scouting decisions without Masai ? please......Masai said he wanted to keep a small staff, this is about keeping the circle tight and getting rid of mascots who leak info (no disrespect meant to AW but that's just how Doug smith's article painted him).

I stopped reading Doug Smith a while ago, his blogs are just ridiculous because he doesn't even try to hide his bias, How can the raptors finish at the bottom of the league for 5 years in a row and somehow according to Doug Smith without Colangelo ever doing a Bad Move.

Doug has his panties in a knot because the people he is paid to cover have become, what he considers, his friends over the years... my two cents.

To add to this, given Smith's reputation for 'I'm right and you are wrong because I'm more knowledgeable than you' attitude.

Couldn't part of Doug's push back against the new regime come from the actions by new management that basically say the old way of doing things, the way Smith agreed with, has been wrong? If Smith has been claiming something parrallel to 'Colangelo is doing it right, he's made the right choices, people who disagree with me don't understand the game/business' (which I think has more or less been his attitude in a nutshell), and TL and MU come in and are claiming something along the lines of 'what Colangelo has been doing is wrong, he's made poor choices, we have a better way of doing things'. Doesn't it indirectly say Doug Smith has been wrong himself?

And what does it say about a guy who is supposed to be in the know, has years of experience following an organization, has advanced and indepth knowledge of details, when he is 'more wrong' or atleast no more right, than some random dudes like you and I?

This all must be a little more than a subtle pimp slap to Smith's ego.

To add to this, given Smith's reputation for 'I'm right and you are wrong because I'm more knowledgeable than you' attitude.

Couldn't part of Doug's push back against the new regime come from the actions by new management that basically say the old way of doing things, the way Smith agreed with, has been wrong? If Smith has been claiming something parrallel to 'Colangelo is doing it right, he's made the right choices, people who disagree with me don't understand the game/business' (which I think has more or less been his attitude in a nutshell), and TL and MU come in and are claiming something along the lines of 'what Colangelo has been doing is wrong, he's made poor choices, we have a better way of doing things'. Doesn't it indirectly say Doug Smith has been wrong himself?

And what does it say about a guy who is supposed to be in the know, has years of experience following an organization, has advanced and indepth knowledge of details, when he is 'more wrong' or atleast no more right, than some random dudes like you and I?

This all must be a little more than a subtle pimp slap to Smith's ego.

I posted something along these lines yesterday. Smith was chief sycophant for Colangelo & Co. for years. It has to grate now that all the things internet posters were saying 3 years ago - to much derision by Smith - are now being said by people he can't dismiss.

You Got To Know When To Hold'em, Know When To Fold'em, Know When To...

Ujiri and Tim are hacking and slashing their way through the office like Vikings who just made landfall.

The fans applaud their every move.

Doug Smith instead sits in the dark, hugging a box of tissues and expressing his disdain.

Why do you suppose there is a giant gap between the fans' perception of the events unfolding and Doug Smith's perception of the events unfolding? They're both receiving the same information, so what gives? Perspective. We the fans are viewing this with no shared professional history or real interaction with these people being fired. Doug Smith on the other hand is a beat writer, shadowing the team 365 days/year. He clearly has attachments. He's clearly being influenced by emotion instead of letting logic catch up. The best thing he could have done was not covered the story, waited a week and then wrote something about it. Writers are in too much of a hurry to be first. They'll gamble their reputations on being first. They do it all the time and we, the readers, many times get disinformation because of it. In this case it merely wasted our precious time.

His editors might have something to say about his petty retort blogger comments. He has had the Raptor portfolio at the Star since I can remember....time for him to cover a new sport I think. Change is good.

It will be interesting to see fan reactions when and if the people they more closely align to (the players) start to get shuffled.

I have a feeling when people like Amir Johnson or DeMar DeRozan get moved there will be a lot of emotions vented in much the same manner. Hell even Bargnani still has some fans.

If Amir gets dealt, yeah, I'll be sad about it but you know what? That's natural and I'm not a writer getting paid to produce neutral stories not laced with my own emotions.

That said, if Amir does get dealt, I'll accept it and sit back and watch the show without criticizing. I'm getting what I wished for after all; a team headed in a new direction. Ujiri deserves the benefit of the doubt for a few years. This is how these things should work. We won't truly understand what he's trying to accomplish until a few years out. It will be tough to read it based on a handful of decisions.

His editors might have something to say about his petty retort blogger comments. He has had the Raptor portfolio at the Star since I can remember....time for him to cover a new sport I think. Change is good.

Hopefully but I doubt it.

As dickishly as Doug Smith puts it, "Thanks for the hits. Keep reading."

Well you know Doug's gotta eat. And if he has to now form new relationships with people in management because his old contacts that would leak him tid bits about the ongoings in the team or make time for interviews or whatever it is he uses to fill out his column then it means more work for Doug. And at the end of the day that is going to cut into his eating time. It's just about having to do some work for Doug. And he doesn't like it.

With regards to whether there has been too much change...we won't know until next season because it's all about the product on the floor and how it affects wins and loses. I personally don't care one way or another who gets axed and who gets brought in to replace them as long as it results in wins.

"We only have one rule on this team. What is that rule? E.L.E. That's right's, E.L.E, and what does E.L.E. stand for? EVERYBODY LOVE EVERYBODY. Right there up on the wall, because this isn't just a basketball team, this is a lifestyle. ~ Jackie Moon